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Biodiverse Landscapes Fund
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The UK’s Biodiverse Landscapes Fund (BLF) aims to reduce poverty, protect and restore biodiversity and lessen the impact of climate change in six environmentally critical landscapes across the globe. These are: - The Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area, covering areas of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. - Mesoamerica, covering areas of Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. - Western Congo Basin, covering areas of Cameroon, Gabon and Republic of Congo. - Andes Amazon, covering areas of Ecuador and Peru. - Lower Mekong, covering areas of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. - Madagascar. The BLF has 3 core aims: - people: to develop economic opportunities through investment in nature in support of climate adaptation and resilience and poverty reduction. - nature: to slow, halt or reverse biodiversity loss in globally significant regions for biodiversity. - climate: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard natural carbon sinks. It will meet these aims by: - reducing poverty and creating sustainable economic development for communities living in, and dependent upon, environmentally precious landscapes. - protecting and restoring ecosystems and biologically diverse landscapes helping to mitigate climate change by preserving carbon sinks and ecosystems. - addressing the causes of environmental degradation. - supporting national and local governments, park authorities and communities to achieve long-term sustainable management and use of natural resources Funding will be distributed across the landscapes according to demands and needs.
Darwin Initiative Round 28
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Darwin Initiative is the UK’s flagship international challenge fund for biodiversity conversation and poverty reduction, established at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The Darwin Initiative is a grant scheme working on projects that aim to slow, halt, or reverse the rates of biodiversity loss and degradation, with associated reductions in multidimensional poverty. To date, the Darwin Initiative has awarded more than £195m to over 1,280 projects in 159 countries to enhance the capability and capacity of national and local stakeholders to deliver biodiversity conservation and multidimensional poverty reduction outcomes in low and middle-income countries.
Darwin Initiative Round 29
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The Darwin Initiative is the UK’s flagship international challenge fund for biodiversity conversation and poverty reduction, established at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. The Darwin Initiative is a grant scheme working on projects that aim to slow, halt, or reverse the rates of biodiversity loss and degradation, with associated reductions in multidimensional poverty. To date, the Darwin Initiative has awarded more than £195m to over 1,280 projects in 159 countries to enhance the capability and capacity of national and local stakeholders to deliver biodiversity conservation and multidimensional poverty reduction outcomes in low and middle-income countries.
The eco.business Fund
Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
The eco.business fund is a public-private partnership investment fund which aims to shift incentives in financial institutions (i.e. Banks) towards investing in nature, by embedding social and environmental risk into investment decisions, catalysing transformational change in the financial sector. The fund will increase lending to businesses which incorporate sustainable practices that contribute to biodiversity conservation, sustainable use of natural resources, climate change mitigation and adaptation to its impact across South America: Ecuador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.
British Academy Coherence & Impact - Challenge-led grants: Heritage, Dignity & Violence
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Tackling the challenge of achieving sustainable peace and preventing violence requires a consideration of local cultures, practices, histories and societal norms, and an understanding of how such norms are complex and contextually differentiated and intersectionally experienced. It is often the case that these considerations are not well or fully brought into policy and practice that tend to ignore aesthetic, representational, and reflective practices. New approaches that cross sectoral and disciplinary boundaries are vital in achieving a step change in this area. The projects funded under this programme demonstrate an innovative and interdisciplinary approach yielding new conceptual understandings, developing ground-breaking research and energising innovative collaborations in the humanities and social sciences.
British Academy Coherence & Impact - Challenge-led grants: Urban Infrastructures of Well-being
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme supports interdisciplinary research across the social and engineering sciences and the humanities looking to explore how formal and informal infrastructures interact to affect the well-being of people in cities across the Global South.
British Academy Core - Challenge-led grants: Sustainable Development
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This programme funds excellent, policy-oriented UK research, aimed at addressing the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and advancing the UK’s Aid Strategy. It supports researchers in the humanities and the social sciences working to generate evidence on the challenges and opportunities faced in developing countries and respond to the Sustainable Development Goals. The Academy is particularly keen to encourage applications from the humanities in this round.
SFC - GCRF QR funding
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Formula GCRF funding to the Scottish Funding Council to support Scottish higher education institutes (HEIs) to carry out ODA-eligible activities in line with their three-year institutional strategies. ODA research grants do not represent the full economic cost of research and therefore additional funding is provided to Scottish HEIs in proportion to their Research Excellence Grant (REG). In FY19/20 funding was allocated to 18 Scottish higher education institutes to support existing ODA grant funding and small projects. GCRF has now supported more than 800 projects at Scottish institutions, involving over 80 developing country partners.
Global Challenges Research Fund Evaluation
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The overall purpose of the GCRF evaluation is to assess the extent to which GCRF has achieved its objectives and contributed to its intended impacts.
Transformation Project - ODA Reporting Tool (ODART)
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The Reporting ODA Digital Service (RODA) is the data submission, processing, reporting repository system for data on BEIS R&I ODA Eligible Programmes delivered by Delivery Partners
UUKi Delivery Support
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
These are delivery cost for shared learning workshops/training and best practice (for current and future applicants) on ODA assurance, eligibility, reporting and partnership working through either the NF and GCRF
ODA website - cross-cutting for both ODA funds
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
This is the website for NF and GCRF consortia that promotes funding calls and impact case studies as well as publishing report such as the annual report and monitoring and evaluation documentation.
Ad-hoc GCRF activity on BEIS Finance system
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Increased contributions towards a range of research projects jointly funded with DFID, and funding for the Devolved Administrations for disbursement to universities within the devolved regions to fund the full economic cost of GCRF ODA research.
DfE NI - GCRF QR funding
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Grant to Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland to enable Northern Irish higher education institutes to carry out pre-agreed ODA-eligible activities in line with their institutional strategies. For Queen’s University Belfast in FY2019/20 this included: workshops in Cambodia, Vietnam, South Africa, and Uganda about health and education; 11 pilot projects spanning 16 eligible countries (Angola, Burundi, China, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam and Zimbabwe); and additional support to GCRF and NF-funded activities. For Ulster University in FY2019/20 funding supported six pump-priming projects on: LMIC maternal, neonatal and child health; PTSD in Rwanda; Decision-Making in Policy Making in Africa and Central Asia; and hearing impairment and dementia in China.
HEFCW - GCRF QR funding
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Additional GCRF funding to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to support Welsh higher education institutes (HEIs) to carry out ODA-eligible activities in line with their institutional strategies. ODA research grants do not represent the full economic cost of research and therefore additional funding is provided to Welsh HEIs in line with their research council grant income. In FY19/20 funding was allocated to Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, Cardiff University and Swansea University. In FY19/20, the funding was used to fund: the full economic cost of existing ODA eligible activities (e.g. already funded by GCRF); small ODA-eligible projects; fellowships to ODA-eligible researchers; and to increase collaboration and impact. 53 ODA-eligible countries have been reported as benefiting from the funded work, with Brazil and India the most frequently mentioned. By region, the largest number of projects were based in the LDC’s (Least Developed Countries) in Asia, South America, and East Africa, with only a few projects in the middle-income countries such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia.
ODA BEIS analysts - cross-cutting for both ODA funds
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
ODA BEIS analysts. For the monitoring and evaluation and learning for NF and GCRF
AMS Coherence and Impact - Global Health Policy Workshops
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Researchers play an important role in driving sustainable impacts on health and welfare by participating in policy development. In many LMICs, poverty correlates with poor health; we are working with partners in LMICs to convene researchers and stakeholders to generate independent, expert health policy advice, based on evidence from research.
Royal Academy of Engineering Academies Collective Fund: Resilient Futures - Frontiers of Development
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Frontiers of Development is part of the Joint Resilient Futures Initiative which is a collaboration between all four UK Academies under the GCRF. The aim of the JRF initiative is to construct a pipeline in the UK and the developing world for interdisciplinary researchers focused on tackling development challenges in a sustainable manner.
Royal Academy of Engineering Core - Engineering a Better World
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
Engineering a Better World is a unique programme focused on achieving sustainable development, through innovative, collaborative, challenge-led engineering. COVID-19
Improving the Quality of Universal Home Visiting: The case of Creciendo con Nuestros Hijos (CNH) in Ecuador
DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
It is well established that the first years of life lay the basis for lifelong development. However, many children in developing countries are exposed to poverty, malnutrition, illnesses, and un-stimulating home environments. These factors are likely to have a detrimental effect on children's cognitive, motor, physical, and socio-emotional development, thus hindering them from reaching their full developmental potential. As adults, they are more likely to provide fewer adequate stimulation and resources for their children, thus contributing to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and inequality. A consolidated body of research has provided evidence that interventions in the early years of life can improve well-being across the life course by promoting early childhood development. The most effective interventions provide direct learning experiences to children and their families. In the last few decades, home-visiting programmes have grown in popularity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and elsewhere. While small-scale trials have shown sustained long-term results, however the important question remains as to whether such results can be achieved at scale. The focus on monitoring is critical, since the impact of these programs might be weakened by implementation challenges across a diversity of settings, human resources, systems, and geographical configurations, both within and across countries. An important research and policy agenda is therefore to monitor, report and sustain the performance of the home visitors, especially when the programmes are run at scale. In this research, we propose to co-design, set up and use a sustainable monitoring system for a large-scale home visiting programme for disadvantaged children in Ecuador: Creciendo con Nuestros Hijos (CNH). This is a home visiting program which targets pregnant women and children of ages 0 to 36 months with weekly visits. The home visitors provide counselling for caregivers regarding child development, healthy behaviours, and proper nutrition; and promote awareness of other social programs. CNH has been in place for more than twenty years, and is currently reaching almost 200,000 children; however, a centralised system for monitoring and reporting key performance indicators has never been put in place. In this project, we propose a partnership between an interdisciplinary academic team of experts in early interventions and home visiting from University College London, together with the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES) of Ecuador and J-PAL Latin America (JPAL-LAC), to pursue this important goal. In the first part of the project, we will set up an Information and Reporting System (IRS) for CNH. First, we will co-develop with the programme staff and key stakeholders a performance indicators and systems outcomes framework, which identifies the relevant data to be collected. This will include both data on the program implementation, such as frequency, duration and content of the visits (currently not recorded), and data on children's growth and cognitive development (now collected in paper format). The appropriate software app will be developed for the tablets and the home visitors will be trained in their use. In the second part of the project, we will use the CNH-IRS to improve the quality of the home visiting program. First, we will co-design the template for a standardised reporting card and examine how much variation there is in programme quality; whether certain observable characteristics of the home visitors are associated with better performance; and whether better performance indicators are associated with better children's outcomes. Second, we will co-design a low-cost motivational intervention via SMS messages, and evaluate with a randomized controlled trial its impact on performance and children's outcomes. Our project has the potential to yield significant benefits for the development of children in Ecuador.